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[Leafsnail]

Which animal is considered to be the ultimate survivor? The common cockroach. An incredibly unspecialised animal.

Actually, it's thought to be pretty good at surviving because it was one of the first insects to have its radiation tolerence measured.  Turns out plenty of other insects have much higher tolerencess.

Anyway, there's no real reason to think we are or that we should be wiping everything else out.  Ultimately, we do depend on other animals for food and materials...

[Deadly Lamarr]

e.g. Keep them in captivity and support them without making use of them; turn them loose in some fashion; kill them in large quantities and keep only the number we need for eggs and dairy; continue eating them but reform the industry in some way; continue doing as we presently do.

i'd go for reform the industry in some way, as it's the most generic one and is open to any good solution anybody smart enough might come up with.

I tried to provide a wide spectrum of answers to address different views, but it's not a multiple choice question.

I would expect that anyone who is interested in the ethics of eating livestock could post on the subject in more detail.

[Tokkius]

Two cents: You're free to do what you want, but to me, eating meat as well as vegetables and etcetera is what we're supposed to do. Forgoing one group for another is unhealthy and unnatural.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Opinion. Calm down.

[Leafsnail]

Eh, it wasn't that long ago that our diets would've had no meat at all in.  We're not hugely adapted towards it.

[DJ]

Define not long ago. Because chimps eat meat too (they actually hunt), so I figure we started eating it before the human-chimp split.

[Leafsnail]

...Very, very small amounts of meat.  Goodall (who's the one who first discovered that they do eat meat) put their meat eating time at around 1.4% of their overall feeding time.

[Zrk2]

Define not long ago. Because chimps eat meat too (they actually hunt for babies), so I figure we started eating it before the human-chimp split.

Fixed. Link: http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/ngm/0304/feature4/online_extra2.html

I really don't like chimps, there like humans, but worse.

[DJ]

What kind of a statistics-twisting measure is feeding time? Obviously you'll get a lot more calories per unit of time eating meat rather than plants. Anyway, AFAIK they *must* get protein from animal sources (though I guess termites are the bulk of it) to remain healthy.

And humans can remain healthy eating nothing but meat and offal, so I wouldn't say we're badly adapted for eating meat. So we can live anywhere "in the wild" eating nothing but animals, but I don't think there's a single place on Earth where you can get everything you need year round just from eating local plants.

[Leafsnail]

What kind of a statistics-twisting measure is feeding time? Obviously you'll get a lot more calories per unit of time eating meat rather than plants. Anyway, AFAIK they *must* get protein from animal sources (though I guess termites are the bulk of it) to remain healthy.

I'm sorry, you're accusing Dr Jane Goodall of statistics twisting?  Feeding time is the thing she's able to watch.  And if the only source of protein is meat, how do elephants survive?  I'll give you a hint: chimpanzees eat nuts and seeds.

And humans can remain healthy eating nothing but meat and offal, so I wouldn't say we're badly adapted for eating meat. So we can live anywhere "in the wild" eating nothing but animals, but I don't think there's a single place on Earth where you can get everything you need year round just from eating local plants.

Uh... what?  I don't think you can live remotely healthily eating just meat (you'd almost certainly catch scurvy pretty quickly) wheras there are plenty of places where people subsisted on purely plant based diets after the advent of farming.

[DJ]

Elephants != chimpanzees
Some animals, humans and chimps included, can't synthesize certain things that other animals can, and must get them from diet, which mostly means eating animals that can synthesise these things..

I can't find the link now, but there was a controlled study where two Swedish guys ate nothing but animal products for two years and they exited the experiment in a better shape than they entered it.
*edit* Found a different study, only twelve months though: link

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

SUMMARY AND CONCLUSIONS.
1. Two men lived on an exclusive meat diet for 1 year and a
third man for 10 days. The relative amounts of lean and fat,
meat ingested were left to the instinctive choice of the individuals.
2. The protein content varied from 100 to 140 gm., the fat from
200 to 300 gm., the carbohydrate, derived entirely from the meat,
from 7 to 12 gm., and the fuel value from 2000 to 3100 calories.
3. At the end of the year, the subjects were mentally alert,
physically active, and showed no specific physical changes in any
system of the body.
4. During the 1st week, all three men lost weight, due to a
shift in the water content of the body while adjusting itself to the
low carbohydrate diet. Thereafter, their weights remained
practically constant.
5. In the prolonged test, the blood pressure of one man remained
constant; the systolic pressure of the other decreased 20
mm. and the diastolic pressure remained uniform.
6. The control of the bowels was not disturbed while the subjects
were on prescribed meat diet. In one instance, when the
proportion of protein calories in the diet exceeded 40 per cent,
a diarrhea developed.
7. Vitamin deficiencies did not appear.
8. The total acidity of the urine during
the meat diet was increased
to 2 or 3 times that of the acidity on mixed diets and acetonuria
was present throughout the periods of exclusive meat.
9. Urine examinations, determinations of the nitrogenous
constituents of the blood, and kidney function tests revealed no
evidence of kidney damage.
10. While on the meat diet, the men metabolized foodstuffs with
FA: G ratios between 1.9 and 3.0 and excreted from 0.4 to 7.2 gm.
of acetone bodies per day.
11. In these trained subjects, the clinical observations and
laboratory studies gave no evidence that any ill effects had
occurred from the prolonged use of the exclusive meat diet.

And you can't really consider post-farming diet, as that is very recent and we couldn't have obtained all essential nutrients from plants alone before it.

[Max White]

I can't find the link now, but there was a controlled study where two Swedish guys ate nothing but animal products for two years and they exited the experiment in a better shape than they entered it.

I'm not that surprised. If you want to be in good shape, eat mostly meat and fruit. Grains and dairy are the real killer here.

[Leafsnail]

Elephants != chimpanzees
Some animals, humans and chimps included, can't synthesize certain things that other animals can, and must get them from diet, which mostly means eating animals that can synthesise these things..

...Really, I'm not sure where you're pulling this from.  The tiny amount of meat chimps have in their diet just isn't gonna be enough.

Plus, your argument is disproved by the perfectly healthy vegetarians who exist.

I can't find the link now, but there was a controlled study where two Swedish guys ate nothing but animal products for two years and they exited the experiment in a better shape than they entered it.

And you can't really consider post-farming diet, as that is very recent and we couldn't have obtained all essential nutrients from plants alone before it.

So uh... we can't consider a post-farming diet, but we can consider a much more recent study on "two Swedish guys"?

[DJ]

See edit.

And you mean perfectly healthy vegetarians who eat a combination of plants that doesn't occur naturally anywhere in the world?

[Leafsnail]

Same criticisms apply.  Only with the added "Two Swedish men who were already perfectly healthy getting by for 2 years without getting scurvy =/= evidence".

Not to mention this "experiment" is performed in reverse by millions of people all around the world.

[Max White]

Not to mention this "experiment" is performed in reverse by millions of people all around the world.

I don't see what your trying to imply. Saying you can live off just meat is not the same as saying you can not live off just plants. These events are not exculsive.